Following the discovery of swine flu-afflicted pig herds in Australia and Canada, 12 pigs in Indonesia’s Pulau Bulan, which sells pork to Singapore, have been diagnosed with the swine flu.

The previous week, four pigs in Singapore were found to be similarly afflicted. These infections are raising concerns about the further spread of the swine flu especially in the Southeast Asian region, because of the very real possibility that this flu strain could combine with the already known bird flu.

The resulting mutation could be as quickly spreading as swine flu and as lethal as bird flu, with an established 60 percent death rate.

Globally, swine flu-caused fatalities jumped by 147 in just 24 hours. The total now is 3,315 deaths in 180 countries, with actual cases far too high to estimate. Cambodia is now seeing person-to-person spread of the swine flu within the country, rather than transmission from arriving travelers.

Formosa (Taiwan) announced that cases are increasing at a rate of 20,000 per week, with the number of people hospitalized in critical condition having jumped to 112 .Two women in the United Arab Emirates perished, one of whom had just safely delivered a child through surgery.

A senior citizen became Iran’s second lost life,following a first of a 36-year-old woman. Meanwhile, from Austria to South Korea to the United States, health authorities are expressing peak concern as children return to school where the swine flu spreads rapidly.

US President Barack Obama’s administration has committed to spend an additional US$2.7 billion, on top of previous announcements in July of US$1.8 billion, to purchase antiviral medicines and vaccines.

A report last week from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology stated that up to 50 percent of the US population could be infected this year, including 1.8 million hospitalizations and somewhere between 30,000 and 90,000 fatal cases.

May Heaven comfort the families who have suddenly lost loved ones to this unfortunate disease,as we pray for a rapid recovery for the afflicted. We look forward to more humans adopting the plant based diet to spare humanity the immeasurable costs of all animal-borne diseases.